Google Analytics pitfalls (and how to avoid them)

It’s easy to run head first into one of these issues and realise too late that you are not collecting proper data about your visitors and how they browse your site.

Let’s go through the list and hopefully you can fix these pitfalls or even prevent them before they happen.

Install Google Analytics correctly the first time

That might sound a bit obvious but there is virtually nothing retroactive in Google Analytics data collection and report processing. There are quite a few items to configure to get Google Analytics running smoothly. It’s okay to implement analytics in stages as long as you understand that there are no do-overs for historical data.

Your data collection strategy translates into a tagging plan, which is a structured list of the elements you want to be able to track with Google Analytics. This means starting with asking yourself the right questions about conversion: How do I measure my site’s success? What data points do I want to capture about my visitors? How can I track complete user journeys?

This generally translates into a document that lists which special tracking such as events for click tracking, form submissions or custom dimensions to track attributes related to a page’s content or a visitor’s profile.

Once you have laid out that tagging plan, you can start deploying your tracking code. For easier installation, it is strongly recommended that you use a tag management system such as Google Tag Manager.

Of course, you could just install the basic tracking code on every single page of your site but that would only provide you with basic data as well. Your analytics mileage may vary.

Agencies: don’t create joint Google Analytics accounts for customers

If you work in a digital agency, there is a strong temptation to measure the performance of the client sites you work on. You *will* be tempted to measure multiple client sites with the same agency account in Google Analytics. Unfortunately, there will come a time when said client will want to part ways or gain administrative access to their data. Tensions ensue and customers end up creating their own Google Analytics account, re-tag their entire website and start from scratch with empty reports. To ensure smooth tracking, the best practice is to have the client create their own account and then ask them to delegate access rights for you to work the account as an agency.

Don’t forget to add tracking code to new site content!

A common mistake is to assume that new content will be auto-magically tracked by Google Analytics. While most content management systems will allow you to consistently include the Google Analytics tracking code, tactical landing pages - for instance - usually need to be created quickly. Tagging is often forgotten so make sure you use even basic tracking code in your page code. Remember that data collection is not retroactive so make sure your tagging is in place before your site launches!

When you create your Google Analytics account, you receive a tracking number which can look like the following: UA-1234567-1

The “1234567” part of this ID is your account number. The “-1” part is your property (website or app) reporting database. This number, when found in your pages’ tracking code tells Google Analytics in which database to store the page, session and user data.

If you use the wrong tracking ID, you send data to the wrong property and as a result, your reports will be affected by “holes” in the graphs and tables.

If for some reason you want to use another property (for a development version of the website for instance) make sure you use the production (“live”) property ID.

Event-based goals are usually useful for micro-conversions, i.e. conversions that are not crucial to your site's performance but indicate engagement with site features (add to cart, PDF download, zoom on product picture, click on homepage carousel, etc.)

If you don't set goals, you will have a hard time measuring how your site performs against your objectives.

Check that e-commerce option box!

If you want to track sales and transactions in Google Analytics, make sure you check the eCommerce options for your view(s). Go for the Enhanced eCommerce option if you can.

Hi there just have a couple issues I'm trying to work out. I'm new to the community, so if I'm posting in the wrong place, please be sure to let me know.

I have customers who need to use Wordpress as they like to maintain and write posts. But at the same time they are hoping for some revenue and do have some PayPal implementation for sales.

Site Search and Tracking within a BlogFor some reason I just can't get my internal site searches to show up in Google Analytics. Could it be because the customer is using Word Press? When they are querying through search, a url parameter of "s" is coming up. So after identifying that I set it up into the site search parameters in Google Analytics. But alas no site searches are showing in the control panel. in fact no pages are showing up at all under search in the control panel. Hmm.

Event Tagging

I would like to track when a customer clicks "order by paypal". I realize for most ecommerce sites of course there would be a thank you page. That destination would of course be the clincher for identifying conversions. But since I'm just using Paypal for the transaction, I don't (maybe a mistake) have the ability to do a thank you page. Perhaps PayPal has a final pass back at the website and I'm just unaware of that.

Are there best practices around making sure the .JS script for analytics from Google is authentics and valid? My concern is that by adding a link to an external JS file, where we don't know at load time what the content is, we would leave our web page open to hackers reading the content of the fields. Are there best practices to reduce/eliminate this risk?